How the Heart Behaves
by Zissou Intern
Summary: Feeling empty and estranged from those around her after Edward leaves, Bella discovers that one Cullen has stayed behind. But are Carlisle's reasons for staying really as simple as he claims, or is there more to it? B/C
1. Chapter 1

**Feeling empty and estranged from those around her after Edward leaves, Bella discovers that one Cullen has stayed behind. But are Carlisle's reasons for staying really as simple as he claims, or is there more to it?**

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The Swan household woke around four Saturday morning. Roused by screaming, Bella Swan spasmed violently beneath twisted, sweat-soaked sheets, before collapsing over the side of the bed in a tangle. It was only when her father came running into the room seconds later that she was able to fit the pieces together and realize that the screams had been her own. Charlie Swan knelt beside his bewildered daughter, reaching out a hand to shift the hair from her tear-streaked face; it was early, and they were both tired and disoriented, otherwise he would have likely mastered the inclination.

"Nightmare?" he croaked helplessly. She barely mustered the strength to nod. The very least she owed him was the truth.

She hadn't gone back to sleep after that. Embarrassed, she dressed quickly for another weekend spent at home and escaped downstairs to the kitchen. Charlie had resumed his snoring on the living room couch—it was where he slept most nights, curled up with the remote and ready to spring into action the moment he heard her yell—and she stooped down in front of him to mute the television.

He deserved better than her. Everyone did.

She stood in the kitchen now, stirring mechanically and gazing vacantly at the stove top. She had forgotten what she was making, but it didn't seem important, so long as she was doing something to make amends for another night of horrors—something _useful_ that would make things easier for Charlie. When he next woke, it would be to something a little more pleasant than a screaming, wild-eyed daughter.

Some time later, breakfast had been finished; she stared at that, too, uncomprehending, and wondered crazily if some elf or fairy had snuck in and prepared it while her back was turned. She still hadn't heard any movement from the other room, so Bella sat down at the table exhaustedly and dropped her head into her arms. She rested there, drifting in and out of consciousness—never fully falling asleep, but existing in the same strange emotionless purgatory she had for months—when a hushed voice from down the hall drew her vague attention.

_"It's every night now, Doc. I just don't know what to do about — no, I guess they don't seem to be getting any worse, but it's sure as hell not getting any better — no, she won't talk to me about it, she won't talk to anyone — well, he really did a number on her, didn't he? — no, I know, I'm sorry, too, I'm just spread kind of thin these days — what? No, I don't think it's a good idea for you to come and see her, just... thanks for being available. I'm a little out of my depth here. I just wish her mother would — "_

"Everything all right in here, Bells?"

Bella blinked and flinched into an upright position; Charlie was standing in the doorway. Had she fallen asleep...? Maybe she had only imagined eavesdropping on the conversation in the other room.

"Yeah." She smiled tightly, but her face had grown so thin even the faintest hint of an expression seemed to pull it too taut. "I... made breakfast."

Charlie seemed to perk at this, and not just because he was hungry—to him, any activity from her other than moping was to be taken for a good sign. Well, she hated to disappoint him, but she wasn't getting any better. Day by day, the hole in her chest wasn't getting any smaller, but maybe she could put a little more effort into hiding the fact that it existed... for his sake, at least.

"You really pulled out all the stops," he whistled. He fell into an assembly line, and once he had heaped his plate high with eggs and sausage and hash browns, he sat down across from her and proceeded to eat in silence. She could tell he was trying his best to pretend like it wasn't an uncomfortable one, but she didn't have the energy to join in the pretense.

Charlie intercepted her on her way back up to her room later.

"Bella..." he began. She froze with her hand on the rail, before revolving on the step to face him. "We're almost out of food. You cooked most of it this morning."

"Right... I forgot to mention that to you earlier," she said lamely. Charlie crossed his arms, as if fortifying himself against her reaction to what he was about to say, and then:

"You're coming with me to the store later and I don't want to hear anything more about it. I don't know what we need, and the last time you wrote me a list I wound up losing it. So we're going."

For the second time that morning, Bella attempted a smile. For the second time that morning, she failed miserably.

Five minutes in Forks' only grocery store and she wanted to escape. Bella trailed behind Charlie like a second shadow, averting her gaze when fellow shoppers stopped to converse with her father... which was getting to be every other minute. It seemed everyone had a grievance to share with the police chief, and he always stopped to listen to them politely—he was especially polite when the conversation turned to baseball, which was frequently, seeing as the Mariners were playing a home game that evening.

The adults barely seemed to notice Bella. Still, she itched to be somewhere less public—to be back home, where she could retreat to the privacy of her room and the oblivion of music dialed up to decibels that made thinking impossible.

"I'm going to check out," she mentioned suddenly, interrupting her father's latest conversation. "If you find anything else you need, you should buy it... just remember to keep the receipt."

Charlie grunted. She could feel his eyes following her as she pushed the cart onward towards the register.

Outside, the Washington sky was slate gray behind a flock of temperamental-looking clouds. Everything was wetter than it had been previously—it must have rained while they were inside—but Bella dismissed the observation as soon as it occurred to her as she stumbled towards the curb. The bag the grocer had given her tore open the moment she stepped out onto the street; produce spilled everywhere, and she half-sat, half-collapsed onto the curb, staring around herself in vague disbelief. Things like this shouldn't surprise her anymore—wasn't this her life? Didn't it all come crashing down around her every time she set foot out the door? On her hands and knees, Bella began to gather her purchases, not even bothering to wonder how she was going to carry it all back to the car.

A pale, ghostly hand entered her peripheral to retrieve one of the bruising apples. Bella's eyes lifted, and for the first time in months her heart came out of hibernation. That split-second sighting brought the dormant thing spluttering back to life, as if it had only been fooling her all this time she had thought it dead beyond hope of reviving.

In that moment, it barely registered with her to feel disappointed that the face the hand belonged to wasn't Edward's. The tawny, ancient eyes of Carlisle Cullen met her beneath the curve of an amused, guarded brow, a wane smile so like his adopted son's turning up one corner of his face that she had to wonder if it wasn't an inherited trait after all. His eyes held hers, and as her chin rose in astonishment, his reciprocated, before his gaze slid away again and he had once more bent himself to the task of retrieving the girl's groceries.

"You really should be more careful, Bella."

She propelled herself into his arms before she knew what she was doing. The reckless momentum of her body was hardly enough to upset his balance, but Carlisle huffed a small noise of surprise all the same, the apple falling from his hand as he brought his arms up quickly to receive her. He chuckled, rising to his feet in one fluid move and pulling her gently with him.

"That's going to leave a few bruises," he remarked, his voice low. He kept his hands on her shoulders as she pulled away to scrub futilely at her eyes; tears would only get in the way. If her vision swam for even an instant, and she allowed Carlisle to go out of focus...

He was right about the bruises—her ribcage ached as fiercely as if she had just been punched. Acting on her impulsive desire for contact had been the equivalent of throwing herself headlong into a brick wall, but Bella was beyond caring. She stood frozen in a sea of scattered groceries as Carlisle helped her recover the rest of them, depositing her purchases into his own cloth shopping bag. She could scarcely believe this was real. Was it possible she had fallen asleep in the car on the way over, only for her brain to have concocted some crueler nightmare?

"Carlisle, what are you doing here?" she asked numbly, hoping to catch her brain in the lie. She couldn't allow herself any more lenience than she already had in that last uncontrolled moment. "I thought... Edward said your family had moved..."

It hurt to say his name. It hurt almost more than she could bear, but she had let it out—now—and then she could move past it—quickly—before she slipped in her resolve and asked the one question she most desperately desired an answer to. Carlisle's head raised infinitesimally at the mention of his son, but then he straightened, his arms wrapped around his bag. The contents were arranged in a better order than they had been previously.

"I elected to stay behind for a few more months. We're putting the house on the market, but there are still patients at the hospital who require my attention. I couldn't just leave town in the middle of their recoveries." A look of deep sympathy crossed his thoughtful face, and Bella was forced to avert her gaze; she distracted herself by tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "I am the only one," he added eventually.

"Oh."

Despite being such a small, noncommittal word, it sounded as if someone had had to strangle it out of her. It took all of the girl's willpower then to pull herself back into the present, to raise her head and meet his eyes once more. An awkward moment passed between them before she presented her arms to invite back the groceries, but Carlisle chuckled once more and shook his head.

"Allow me. I take it the squad car is yours?"

Bella nodded, following after him as they wove through the parking lot. She found herself mesmerized by the wonderful white expanse of the man's medical coat, kept immaculately clean despite his profession, and it was all she could do to keep herself from reaching out and grabbing a fistful of it to assure herself that it was real. Everything about Carlisle Cullen was immaculate, but he achieved it effortlessly, and he had a natural air of prestige about him that few could hope to effectively imitate. He popped open the trunk of the car, seemingly in tune to the fact that nobody locked their doors in Forks, and deposited his cargo. When he turned to face her again, Bella lowered her eyes quickly, worrying the hem of her jacket between her fingers. She was painfully aware that she was being scrutinized; Carlisle Cullen's stares could rival the intensity of his son's when they grew clinical.

"Bella," he said quietly, "at the risk of bringing the office home with me, you look a little anemic. Have you been eating?"

She wondered suddenly what he must see when he looked at her. The mirror held no interest for her anymore—admittedly, it never had, at least not in the days before she had met Edward—and Charlie hadn't allowed her to change out of her house clothes for fear of losing his daughter back into black hole dimension that had become her bedroom. She knew she had lost weight, because Jessica liked to complain about it endlessly—but Bella had always been a naturally thin girl, so weight loss had only lent her the painful look of emaciation. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, and the blush that had always rose so readily to her cheeks seemed to have extinguished permanently.

"Only when Charlie makes me," she admitted. Carlisle grunted mildly, as if he had just been read a telling symptom, before raising a hand to feel her forehead. He had done it so many times before that Bella hardly would have noticed it now, had the man's chilling touch not felt so identical to the one she still longed for in the darker, more desperate hours of the night. Her eyebrows drew together helplessly beneath his palm and she shut her eyes tight, wondering if she was about to cry or faint from relief beneath the kind caress.

"Dr. Cullen," a voice intoned. Carlisle drew his hand away, and Bella followed his gaze over her shoulder to find Charlie standing behind them. "Conducting check-ups in the parking lot these days?" He did not sound happy to see him.

"My apologies, Chief Swan. Bella was looking a little ill, that's all."

"I'm fine," Bella informed them both. She wasn't, but Carlisle Cullen's reassuring presence in Forks didn't make it such a lie. "Carlisle was just helping me with the groceries."

Charlie, mentally putting together the equation of Bella and groceries in his head, nodded in understanding, and with a faint grunt he pulled open the car door.

"Doug invited me over to watch the game..." he began hesitantly. He seemed to feel guilty for leaving her alone at the house these days, and Carlisle's presence there was obviously doing nothing for his conscience. "You don't mind eating alone again, do you?"

Bella shook her head, but she made no move to get into the car. Of course she intended to eventually, but... she couldn't bring herself to leave until she knew for certain she would see Carlisle again. She doubted she would manage to secure another meeting with her father looking on now, but she had to try—

"Bella is more than welcome to have dinner with me tonight," Carlisle offered suddenly. Both father and daughter whipped their heads around, but where Charlie's face had gone several shades paler, Bella's appeared to open like a flower at the invitation, blooming with a sudden hint of her old color. "... with your father's permission, of course," Carlisle amended, staring at her meaningfully.

"Really?" Bella whirled. Charlie seemed to be hunting for some excuse to prevent her from going, but it had been months since he had seen his daughter emotionally invest herself in anything, and they both knew he didn't have the heart to refuse her.

"... all right," he conceded gruffly, but Bella was beyond noticing his trepidation. "I'll swing by to pick you up as soon as the game is over."

As Bella turned to follow after Carlisle, her father caught hold of her arm.

"And Bella?"

"What? What is it?" she inquired, her voice catching. She stared at Charlie fearfully, wondering if he could have possibly changed his mind that fast... until, with a defeated sigh, he relinquished his hold and allowed his hand to fall back into his lap.

"Nothing."

Carlisle was watching them over his shoulder. Bella detached herself from the car and hurried after him, looking forward to an evening spent with the father of the boy who had shattered her irreversibly.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** **I've changed my username since the last time we met, but I think I'll be sticking with this from now on. :-) Thank you so much for the kind reviews everyone! They really mean a lot to me, and they're helpful in letting me know what is/isn't working, or what to avoid. Anyway, sorry for the delay, and I hope you enjoy!**

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**II**

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Bella sat in the passenger seat of the Mercedes, watching the world blur by outside the window. The clouds had opened up overhead and rain slicked the glass, sluicing the road beneath the churning tires, but the speedometer kept consistently several miles under the speed limit. She wondered if Carlisle always drove this conservatively, or if he was just holding back because she was in the car. She sank further down into the upholstery at the thought. It just served as another reminder of how inconveniently human she was.

Catching her eye in the rearview mirror, Carlisle offered a smile, and she sat up a little straighter.

They turned down the familiar back road and drove deeper into the woods. Bella craned her head up as the house flickered into view, revealing itself in snapshots between the trees. She hadn't been back since the incident, and her heart rejoiced at the sight of it—it felt exactly like the sort of homecoming she had always expected but never felt when returning to any of the places she actually lived. How could home be anywhere else but this?

The house would be empty, though. And as they pulled into driveway, Bella noticed a sign driven into the front lawn. She turned her eyes away, knowing what it would say, but she couldn't bear to read it.

Carlisle had already extracted himself from the car and pulled open her door in the time it took her to fumble with her seatbelt; she accepted his offered hand, and he maneuvered her towards the house with the other guiding her paternally on the small of her back.

"Feels like home," she mentioned, clutching her forearms and clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering.

"This will always be a home to you, Bella," Carlisle said quietly. In the foyer, he lent her his shoulder as she hopped from one leg to the other and pulled off her shoes.

"I'm not sure its next owners will agree," she said. Carlisle smiled.

"I'll have to have a talk with them."

"Right, I can see the listing now: vampire home, four bedrooms that have never been slept in, one human girl included," Bella remarked as she followed him into the kitchen. When Carlisle's smile flexed a little wider in appreciation of her humor, she nearly froze in her tracks—had she just made a joke? When was the last time she had made _anyone_ smile, much less herself?

It felt... strange. Not uncomfortable, but it was like relearning to ride a bicycle after years without practicing. Still, out of all the Cullens, Bella had always felt most comfortable—most _herself_—around Carlisle. She had certainly never been a person that could help being herself anyway, but it always felt like a terrible, oftentimes mortifying inconvenience... _especially_ after getting to know Edward, and subsequently growing to... but anyway...

Things were _different_ with Carlisle—and it was only now that she was given an opportunity to truly be alone with him that she really recognized the fact. She almost felt treacherous for the flood of relief his presence inspired in her, because it was something she had never experienced before in regards to Edward. It was as if _this_ man gave her unvoiced permission to be herself: calamitous, average, and imperfect. Human. He was still intimidating in his own right, but nothing about him implied that he could ever view her with anything less than affection.

She wondered, idly, if she deserved it.

The kitchen looked as beautiful and as unlived in as ever. Bella hauled herself cautiously up onto a stool at the bar, trying not to appear too obvious as her eyes followed Carlisle's every movement; she would occasionally allow them to flicker down or away, but never for any significant amount of time. She had been staring since their encounter in the parking lot, and she had no way of knowing that the quality of her stare suggested a startling, almost inarticulate need—that her brown eyes had deepened to umber with an intense, single-minded bias for the object of their gaze, and that in many ways it was the way she used to stare at Edward, and that Carlisle had noticed the look.

"It's all right to look away," he mentioned, with his usual effortless insight. "I'm not going anywhere."

"But you will eventually," she said helplessly. The man raised his eyes to meet hers levelly; he had been in the process of washing his hands, but he twisted the tap off now and made his way around to where she was seated. Their sudden proximity did cause the girl to lower her gaze as Carlisle eased into the stool beside her. She continued to stare very hard at his right knee until one of the man's hands ghosted beneath hers, tugging it gently free from where it had fisted itself in her shirt.

"Bella," he said slowly. The hand that rested between his was limp and lifeless. "I'm not going to pretend my reasons for inviting you here tonight weren't a little selfish. It was quite a shock to see you earlier. I wanted to take some time for myself to make sure you were all right."

"Sorry," she mumbled pathetically.

"Not at all," he reassured her. "I've also been rather lonely at home recently. I hope you don't mind, but I could do with a bit of company tonight."

She picked up on an odd note in his voice, and raised her eyes once more to meet his. He stared back at her unflinchingly, with the inclination of a smile tucking up one corner of his mouth, but there were unfamiliar creases around the man's eyes, and she suddenly realized that he looked tired. Her hand came to life all at once and clutched his ferociously.

"Carlisle, did something happen?" she demanded.

"Yes, but it's not what you think." The man sighed, as if he had been holding a secret reserve of breath hostage for hours only now to finally release it in her presence. "Just one of my patients. No one you would know. I'm afraid they passed away during surgery this afternoon."

"Oh, Carlisle, I'm so sorry," Bella murmured. After a quiet moment, she felt the man's hand reciprocate her pressure ever-so-slightly.

"I won't count for you the number of times it's happened before," he said, with a hint of his usual humor returning. "... but thank you, Bella."

"That's amazing, though," she mentioned; then, realizing that she had not effectively expressed her full thought, she hurried on. "I mean, that you can still feel something even after all this time. It's... you're too good, Carlisle. I'm not sure I would be able to say the same if our lives were reversed."

"You know," he said thoughtfully. "In all the time I've known you, Bella, I'm afraid you've never given yourself enough credit. You have a tremendous heart. I don't think in all my years wandering this earth I've ever encountered its likeness. I'm certain that you, of all people, can appreciate the enormity of that statement."

Bella couldn't quite appreciate it yet, however, because his remark had rendered her speechless. She gazed into Carlisle's eyes almost as if she was afraid to believe they could possibly be talking about the same person—about _her_. Surely there had been a hundred Bella Swans to have walked the earth before her; maybe no two of them had ever been exactly the same, but really, what could possibly distinguish her from every other, much less _every,_ girl that Carlisle had ever met? The statistic was enough to make her head spin.

The earnestness in the man's expression was almost too overwhelming at this point, so her eyes once more fell to where their hands were joined. She had forgotten that he was still holding it. If she squinted hard enough, she could almost imagine his hands belonged to Edward... but even at the time he had left, the other had still been wary of prolonged contact with her.

It was so easy for Carlisle.

His hands released hers then, as if the man had also suddenly been made aware of them for the first time. He chuckled lightly as he pushed off from the table and rose.

"I'm afraid I'm not being a very good host," he apologized. "I haven't even changed out of my work clothes yet, and I only went to the store to purchase cleaning supplies for the house. I'd like to run back into town and get you something to eat. You don't mind waiting, do you?"

Bella hesitated only a moment, before shaking her head in agreement. She hadn't felt truly hungry in months, but she didn't want Carlisle to quietly suffer for the entirety of the evening wondering if she was being properly accommodated. Evidently satisfied, the man snatched his black bag off the counter and turned to go.

"Just... hurry back, won't you?"

Carlisle paused in the doorway, before turning his head slightly. Bella caught a glimmer of gold, and thought that the shadows thrown across his face from the hall may have moved aside to accommodate a reassuring smile.

"I'll be back before you know it."

And in the next moment, he was gone—undoubtedly moving faster than her human senses could detect. She thought she may have heard a sound upstairs, a thump from the furthest corner that she knew to be the room that he and Esme had once shared, and it wasn't long after that she heard the car start in the driveway. It was several minutes after the Mercedes had driven off that Bella suddenly became anxious for something to do. The girl got down off the stool and helped herself to a glass of water, but she was only able to take the tiniest of sips before her stomach clenched in revolt against it. Grimacing, she made her way into the den with glass still in hand, determined not to let the sudden feeling of emptiness get the better of her.

But the emptiness was vast. She couldn't tell any longer where it began or where it ended—inside, or out? The enormous house yawned wider with each abandoned hallway and unfurnished white room, promising not even the esoteric relief of ghosts or memories. From what she had seen of it—and the hallway had been enough, she couldn't bear to explore the rest—the Cullens had left no evidence of their existence here, as surely as Edward had left no evidence of his existence in her life. He had left her one thing, though, and Bella wrapped an unconscious arm around her abdomen as she stared out the sliding glass door that led to the back porch. The room was completely dark, but she didn't bother searching for the light. She watched the rain beat down against the glass and wash itself away in ribbons, its rhythm doing nothing to distract her from the pain of her abandonment.

Suddenly, she couldn't stand to be in the house any longer. Setting her glass down, she moved to the door and pulled it open, letting herself onto the back porch. She didn't ease herself into the transition, as one might when first dipping into a pool, but stepped out into the torrential downpour and allowed the storm to hit her full in the face, the unkind first kiss of the Washington elements driving her to close her eyes against it. She was drenched within moments, but she endured it, her thin body trembling with quiet strength. For the first time, it felt as if all her wounds were bared, and were now being washed clean.

She didn't know how long she stood out there for. She only knew that at some point she raised her arms to hug herself, and that it was several minutes after that she presently became aware of Carlisle standing in the doorway behind her.

"It isn't fair!" Bella shouted suddenly, rounding to face him, and it was more than just rainwater that was streaming from her eyes. "It was unfair of him to take you away from me! My heart was broken, but it wasn't just once! Maybe I could have bared it if he hadn't taken you all with him!"

She could see by the expression on his face that Carlisle was stricken by her words—and by the scene she was currently manifesting—but she soldiered on before he could stop her.

"You don't understand!" she sobbed. "How could you understand? For the first time in my life, even when I found myself in a place where I so obviously didn't belong, I felt like I _could_. Like there was _room_ for me. Like I wasn't _just_ a nuisance anymore."

It was like listening to her own life's testimonial being delivered by a stranger. She barely recognized the feelings as her own as she gave voice to them, she had kept them so well-hidden... all of these years... she was as astonished as Carlisle to hear the things she was saying now, although she thought her face probably betrayed it less. With each admission, each release, she saw his expression grow more and more anguished—she saw his beautiful face contorting in a way that made her own heart leap towards him with the realization that in that moment, the man wished to take on all of her pain as his own... and that it was his inability to do so that he found most torturous.

"Bella, please come inside," he pleaded with her quietly. "You'll catch cold."

"I thought you couldn't really catch colds in the rain," Bella mentioned. The rain-soaked heroine from before, the one who trumpeted her feelings to the night sky and to aloof, older Adonises—the one who apparently didn't require a raincoat—had retreated, and it was something of an anticlimactic homecoming to feel herself inhabiting her own shoes again.

"I'd prefer it if you came inside."

"I'm sorry," she muttered, as she stepped forward to join him beneath the shelter of the roof. "Carlisle, I don't know what came over me — "

She felt the man's hand settle suddenly on her shoulder, and she lifted her gaze from beneath her clumping lashes.

"There's no need to apologize, Bella."

In that moment, Bella thought—perhaps crazily—that the man was seeing her, really _seeing_ her, for the very first time. No longer was she merely confined to the categories of _human girl_ or _Edward's girlfriend _or _liability_, Carlisle was clearly seeing her as _Bella,_ and the fact that she had finally registered in his mind caused her skin to heat and her heart to quicken nervously. She felt exposed, but also somehow strangely justified in the recklessness of her actions, if this was to be the end result—still, it wasn't enough for her. Not yet.

"I'm sorry," she said again; she ducked her head sheepishly, possibly apologizing for her apology, but it was more likely she was apologizing in advance for her next words. "I know I'm soaking wet, but... will you hold me anyway?"

The sudden silence that followed made her request seem brazen; or worse, pathetic. Bella couldn't remember the last time she had asked anyone for anything, and she felt selfish for doing so now, _especially_ considering her current state, and the fact that Carlisle had probably only just changed into a fresh pair of clothes, and that he had never asked for her to reenter his carefully ordered life and throw it back into disarray —

But his arms enclosed her then, and Bella at last was still. The world outside the realm of his embrace seemed to fall away until it was just the two of them standing alone together in a pool of yellow porchlight, listening to her breath. Her head found his chest eventually and came to rest there, and while she was dismayed to feel a wet stain spreading rapidly from her to him, she couldn't bring herself to care about it enough to pull away.

Despite this, the weight of his arms never seemed to settle fully around her shoulders, and the man himself seemed ready to loosen his grip with the slightest provocation. She needed to be held tightly, _desperately._ Couldn't he _sense_ that was what she needed? Couldn't he oblige her just that much more?

Carlisle's reservation only made her clutch to him harder. If _someone_ didn't hold her there against him, she was liable to wash away with the rain.


	3. Chapter 3

**I think you've all waited long enough, so here is chapter three.  
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**III**

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Bella woke aching to high heaven the next morning. Confused, the girl drew her sheets aside and made to get out of bed, wincing when the movement only seemed to aggravate the pain further. She shambled awkwardly down the hall to the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind her, before turning to the mirror and pulling up her shirt.

What she saw immediately made her wish she'd thought twice before looking. There was a bruise the size of Washington state escalating up the entire right side of her torso, discoloring her too-fair skin and protruding ribcage in a mottled chartreuse that was sure to deepen to purple in the next twenty-four hours. Bella frowned in disbelief as she prodded where Forks would be, had her bruise been an actual map, but the pain from even this tender inspection made further charting impossible. She let her shirt drop and backed up against the wall, sliding to the floor in confusion.

_That's going to earn you a few bruises._ Of course. Carlisle had warned her of the consequences of hugging him so fiercely, but the consequences suddenly seemed less important than the revelation that it had all happened. Carlisle was _here,_ in Forks; the evidence of their reunion was mapped out all over her body.

Suddenly, the bruise didn't seem as ugly as it had seconds before.

She had to see him again.

Bella dressed and made her way cautiously down the stairs. Charlie was already awake and seated at the table, tucking into a second cup of coffee. As she moved around the kitchen, she could feel his eyes following her over the top of his newspaper. She consciously adjusted her stride to hold herself a little less stiffly.

"Sleep all right last night, Bells?"

"Fine. Why do you—?"

Bella froze over the piece of toast she was buttering. She turned to stare at Charlie, who had given up on pretending to read and was now eyeing his daughter watchfully.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah."

Their conversation ended abruptly, and Chief Swan went back to his paper. As per usual, Bella was left to read between the lines of her father's words, but the true subject of today's line of questioning was obvious—it was as if they'd had a different conversation entirely.

No woods, no Edward, no screaming. No nightmares.

As Bella shut herself up in the cabin of her truck and started the engine, her heart fluttered apprehensively in her chest. What did it mean? Surely it couldn't mean she was _over_ Edward—

And then, she panicked: what if she never saw him again? What if that achingly beautiful face, the face that had moved her heart in the space of a single dark glance, was already beginning to recede from her memory, as she had been afraid it would? What if Edward never came back to her again—real or otherwise?

Even after all this time, she couldn't bear the thought of it. At least her nightly terrors had given her an opportunity to relive their last moments together, as shattering as they had been. Now that they appeared to be gone, she wasn't sure what it meant.

But Bella was sure of one thing: she _had_ dreamed last night. As she merged out onto the highway, the girl tried wracking her brain for some clue as to what it had been about. She was able to recall a vague portrait of the woods, of watery sunlight filtering down through the canopied leaves above her... maybe... _had_ it been her recurrent nightmare after all? The forest had been the same. But Edward had already gone, and she was alone, but there was something more than trees looming over her this time, something—

She was so absorbed in remembering that she nearly missed her turn. It was only moments later as she was pulling into the Cullens' driveway that she realized her heart was still hammering in her chest. If it was anxiety about the disappearance of her night terrors, she didn't understand why it would have stuck with her for the entire drive over. She should be happy that the void Edward left her with was finally showing signs of closing up—so why was she so nervous all of a sudden? Was it the thought of seeing Carlisle again?

It occurred to her that she might not even find him at home today, and the thought sent her frantically fumbling with her seatbelt and nearly pitching over onto the ground as she got out of the car. The garage door had been retracted and she could see Carlisle's Mercedes parked inside, but that could mean anything—

Bella climbed the steps to the front stoop. The girl stood for a moment, shifting from one leg to the other in indecision. Tentatively, she raised her finger, hovering it over the doorbell, when a soft voice called to her from around the backside of the house.

"I'm in the yard, Bella."

Her heart began to hammer in earnest. It was pure elation that carried her successfully around the side of the house, that kept her from stumbling even the slightest bit on grass still slick with yesterday's rain. As she looped around the back porch, however, she was greeted by a startling sight: the Cullens' backyard was strewn with the giant corpses of uprooted trees, as if a freak tornado had selectively chosen that exact spot to unleash its full fury on. Bella navigated her way through the maze of fallen pines, many of them long dead and rotting. Her streak of good luck wore itself out and she slipped, but a large hand caught her beneath the armpit and steadied her from behind. The girl turned her head, relief flooding her features.

"Good morning." Carlisle greeted her with his usual warmth, as if nothing were amiss—as if his entire property wasn't lying in ruins around them. "Let's find you a less treacherous place to stand. I assume Charlie doesn't know you're here?"

"I told him I had errands to run in Port Angeles," Bella agreed sheepishly. Carlisle refrained from passing any judgment as he led her up the back steps and found a dry chair for her on the porch. Bella sat gratefully, but raised herself up quickly to catch the hem of his shirt before he could disappear into the house to get her a refreshment. "I just came by to return Esme's clothes. Thanks for letting me borrow them... last night."

In the light of morning, Bella was feeling more than a little embarrassed by her behavior the night previous. It wasn't like her to let herself go like that, to just... surrender to pain. To tell people what she was feeling. She had always thought that enduring it quietly was the way to go, that acknowledging it might just possibly kill her, but now it was all out in the open and Carlisle was its recipient. The man looked surprised by something he found on her face and was suddenly beaming at her.

"Well, isn't that wonderful?" he said.

Bella ducked her head, raising a self-conscious hand to her face. "What...?"

"It's good to see you blushing again, Bella. I hadn't realized how much I missed it until just now."

Beneath her fingers, she could feel the flush creeping across her face. More than that, she could feel how prominent her cheekbones were, and she quickly drew her hand away. She quietly passed the bundle of Esme's clothes to him, and Carlisle disappeared back inside the house. He had loaned them to her the day previous when hers had been too wet to go home in... of course, Charlie hadn't been home to notice, anyway. At the very least she had spared the upholstery inside the Mercedes.

Carlisle returned moments later with a cup of tea. Bella accepted it gratefully. "Edward," he volunteered an answer to the carnage. "He uprooted some of them, but most he splintered completely in half. None of them could be saved, unfortunately. I've been waiting for a break in the weather, and today I'm just clearing them out and replanting." He nodded towards a few standing trees around the perimeter of the yard. Bella noticed that some of their branches were flagged with orange tape. "I've taken them from a condemned patch of forest a few miles out. I think they'll like living here."

"So even on your days off, you spend the morning saving lives," she observed. Carlisle smiled noncommittally. "Did he—Edward—was this the night of my birthday? After he took me home?"

"I wouldn't worry too much about it," he said—which, of course, only saw Bella worrying more. "People have different ways of dealing with things. Some take their feelings out on their surroundings, while others... on themselves."

Carlisle gave her shoulder a gentle pat as he rose and went back to work. Bella held her tea between her hands and considered, but it wasn't long before her gaze had returned to Carlisle in the yard. The sun had risen above the trees, and while it wasn't exactly warm, the other had shed his outer jacket and was now working in only a T-shirt and jeans. Bella thought she had never seen the elder man out of a suit or medical jacket, and that was when she realized Carlisle wasn't much older than herself—not appearance-wise, anyway. What had once been a significant age difference seemed to melt away as she watched him raise his axe and split another log; beneath the shirt, she could see abdominal muscles tense, not with the effort of raising the axe, but with the effort of letting it down gently enough not to obliterate the stump beneath it. Of course he would do it the old-fashioned way. He probably used to split wood all the time when he was... what, her age? There was so much about Carlisle, about any of them, she still didn't know. All she really knew in that moment was that his arms seemed too strong for his profession, and that last night those same arms had been around her.

He was right about one thing: her blush was back in full force today. As Bella tried desperately to pretend like her tea was, at the very least, riveting, she didn't hear Carlisle return so much as see another shadow suddenly join with her own. She might have dropped her cup completely had she not been so used to vampire comings-and-goings.

"Are you sure you're feeling all right, Bella?" She glanced up to find a worried look on his face. Staring at Carlisle up close like this, it was... it reminded her of the first time she had seen Edward in broad daylight. Rays of sun streamed past him, and his skin pallor, usually deathly pale on overcast days, erupted with mesmerizing gleams and glimmers, winking and flaring as if she was gazing at him through a camera lens. She kept her hands stubbornly wrapped around her mug to suppress an overwhelming urge to reach up and touch that heaven-sent face. "I don't mean to pry, but I sensed your temperature spike, and your heart rate has elevated. Do you mind if I have a look?"

But of course she didn't—that was the problem. She turned her flaming face away as Carlisle raised an experimental hand to her forehead; his thumb swept downward eventually until he was cupping the curve of her face. It fit so perfectly, she felt like her body was betraying her.

"Maybe I was celebrating too soon," he said quietly. "That might not have been a blush at all, but the onset of fever. Were you feeling all right when I dropped you at home last night?"

"I'm fine," Bella stammered. And then, in an effort to change the subject, "Do your patients ever complain about how cold your hands are?" She hoped the question would be enough to divert him momentarily, or at least until she could get her heartbeat under control. Carlisle laughed in a way that told her her question had surprised him. She supposed when you were as old as he was, surprises came very rarely.

"It's a fairly common complaint. I've taken to carrying hand warmers in my pocket."

"I can't imagine the effort..." she trailed off. His hand still rested against her face, but it was as if he had forgotten it, or was past noticing. That made exactly one of them.

"You get used to it, after a while. We're all used to it by now. The habits and little deceptions become second-nature, but then... well, let's just say I hadn't realized I'd developed so many until Edward brought you home. It's nice to be oneself."

"I wasn't complaining," Bella whispered. "It feels nice. I hope that doesn't mean I'm running a fever." She brought her hand up hesitantly to his, but in the next instant both yanked their hands away as if in the wake of a shock, and she laughed sheepishly. She had been holding her tea, and next to his skin hers was piping hot. "Holy crow, I take it back."

"I would love to know the origins of that turn of phrase," he said as he took hold of her arm. She realized too late, in the exact moment he pushed her sleeve up, what he was doing, but even then it seemed senseless to argue. "I've been meaning to see how you were healing. Charlie thought it best that I didn't come by, and I tended to agree with him... until yesterday."

He flexed her arm toward him and overturned it, revealing the long, alabaster scar—a permanent souvenir from her birthday. "That healed nicely. In a few years, you won't even notice it." Unexpectedly, his hand went next to her crescent-shaped scar. "This, however..."

"I know. I don't mind them, truthfully."

"It's still two scars too many, Bella." She felt an ice-cold finger tweak the collar of her shirt aside and was so nervous she finally did release her grip on her tea; thankfully, she had the cup pinned between her knees. She figured out what Carlisle was doing faster than her nerves should have allowed and quickly shifted her collar back, but she could tell from the look on his face that he had seen the bruises. Carlisle sighed deeply.

"If we're going to be making a habit of this, why don't I give you a spare key?"


End file.
